George Orwell was right. A totalitarian society will rewrite its rules. Then it will rewrite its history.
Not long ago, thanks to the library app Libby, I listened to the audiobook of Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” It had been a long time since I’d read the 1945 novella, but I remembered the story: Mistreated animals revolt against their cruel human owner and set about creating an idealistic society where there are no humans and all animals are equal. But the pigs, cleverest by far of all the animals, quickly seize the reins and establish an oppressive regime. It isn’t long before they become even more corrupt and tyrannical than the humans they replaced.
“Nineteen Eighty-Four,” Orwell’s longer and more complex novel, was published in 1949. I read it in high school in the early 1970s and can remember pondering whether the totalitarianism the novel warned about could ever gain a foothold in the United States. Would independent thought be suppressed? Would propaganda be used to control our citizenry? Would truth be manipulated to maintain absolute power? Those things didn’t happen in 1984, of course, but the possibility remained that someday they could.
Flash forward fifty-something years, and here we are.
Big Brother has arrived and lives–once again–in the White House, a shock to those of us who watched in horror his attempted overthrow of the United States government on January 6, 2021. This time around, the co-equal branches of government—Congress and the courts—seem largely unable or unwilling to challenge the chief executive’s insatiable thirst for absolute power.
There’s so much that’s mind-boggling, not to mention illegal, in the things the Trump administration has done and is doing that it’s hard to know where to start. But as a former social studies teacher, perhaps my heart breaks the most over the way he’s trying to rewrite history. When not outright denying the truth, he’s doing his darndest to pretty it up beyond recognition.
He started by going after “DEI” at colleges and universities that displeased him. Now he’s set his sights on museums, most notably the Smithsonian. Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. It has traditionally operated as an independent institution and not an agency of the executive branch. Up until now, history exhibits at the Smithsonian have been designed and created to present the most accurate picture of our nation’s past as possible, including both triumphs and tragedies.
But calling the Smithsonian WOKE and OUT OF CONTROL (his capitalization, not mine), Mr. Trump is hellbent on removing all “improper ideology,” in whatever way he chooses to define that term, and replacing it with more celebratory content.
Not surprisingly, much of his ire has been directed at the Smithsonian’s portrayal of slavery in America. Declaring that there’s “too much about how bad slavery was,” he’s ordered a redesign that will be more “uplifting.” Uhhh…news flash, Mr. President. That could be challenging. Because there was nothing uplifting about slavery. Nothing.
You don’t have to know much to know that. You don’t have to read much to know that. On the outside chance Mr. Trump might become interested in pursuing the truth, he could start by reading the novel “James” by Percival Everett, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2024. Or he could revisit “Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” and even “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” He could study biographies of Harriet Tubman and the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass. George Orwell’s dystopian novels? They’re the icing on the cake.
And if he reads, while he reads, I hope the 47th president will keep in mind these wise words from our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln: History is not history unless it’s the truth.
(August 30, 2025)